Geography Mapping Racial Restrictive Covenants in Yakima County McKenna Adams, Erik Hardiman Project Mentor(s): Sterling Quinn, PhD
Racial restrictions in land transactions and leases have a long history of use throughout the US, including Washington State. Washington’s House Bill 1335 led to a multi-university project to identify and map neighborhoods with historic restrictions and assist in the removal of any remaining racial covenants. This requires individual deeds and land parcel descriptions to be extracted from larger collections, which are then used to locate and map each deed. Due to limitations in computer programs, human intervention and manual mapping are necessary to correctly map complex land tract descriptions. Our work focuses on deeds from the 1920s in Yakima County that mostly targeted farmers and ranchers with Asian ancestry. We mapped hundreds of these records in a GIS using public land descriptions, the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), historic maps, and aerial imagery. The resulting geographic pattern can then be analyzed to determine where racial restrictions were most concentrated in Yakima County, as well as where they may still be present, even if not legally enforceable. Once completed, all digitized deeds will be incorporated into the larger "Eastern Washington Racial Covenants Locator Map" hosted by Eastern Washington University, assisting in the spread of public awareness and the implementation of HB 1335 and other state legislation through the removal of these racial restrictions. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation (May 21, 9:30am–3:00pm) Keywords: GIS, Yakima County, Land Transactions, Racial Restrictive Covenants SOURCE Form ID: 67 Evaluating Potential Impacts of Wildfire and Anthropogenic Disturbance on Fish Habitat in the Wildcat Burn Area, Yakima County, WA Hannah Campbell Project Mentor(s): Jennifer Lipton, PhD On August 15th, 2025, a lightning strike ignited the Wildcat Fire, which burned 10,940 acres in the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests in Washington State. While wildfires are seen as a positive disturbance in forested environments, fisheries conservation may be affected when combining the effects of natural wildfire disturbance with anthropogenic harm, such as building rock dams, a common recreation activity. Rock dams reduce river flow and have been speculated to cause harm to aquatic ecosystems by promoting standing water and blocking fish passage. This research will use survey data from Mid-Columbia Fisheries during the 2025 Bull Trout Task Force field season, with a focus on Bumping Lake and Bumping River, where rock dam structures up to 25 meters long were observed, with additional rock dams also found downstream. The combined impacts of rock dams and wildfire on freshwater ecosystems will be spatially analyzed by evaluating burn intensity, slope, and proximity to rock dams to better understand how soil erosion and mass wasting may contribute to water quality and habitat. The harmful impacts of rock dams may worsen as the frequency of droughts and wildfires increases in central Washington. The lack of recent literature on the correlation between rock dams, wildfires, and the degradation of critical fish habitat and spawning grounds leaves many questions about the full impacts of these structures. This research will inform the 2026 Bull Trout Task Force field crew about these potential impacts, and guide conservation and restoration efforts. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation (May 21, 9:30am–3:00pm) Keywords: Wildfire, Fisheries Conservation, GIS, Aquatic Health, Temperate Forest SOURCE Form ID: 245
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